Page 46 of Soul on Fire
Chapter Eighteen
Matenda
The Congo Forest
Elliot boiledwater to refill their jerry can while Ikolo took apart the engine and the fuel line cleaned both out. He blew out the fuel line after picking dirt and clumps of grit from the engine. More dark sludge spattered out after he blew. “Dirty fuel,” Ikolo told him as he put the motorbike back together. Elliot watched and waited, his gaze straying over Ikolo’s arms, his lean muscled shoulders.
As they said their goodbyes, Keise pulled them both aside. “There was a man this morning coming down the track. Rebels moved in on a village four hours from here, in the direction you are headed. He managed to escape, and he described the one you’re searching for. He was with those who destroyed his village.”
Four hours away. Majambu could still be near.
He settled behind Ikolo on the bike, but this time, everything was different from the day before. He knew the body he was holding, knew Ikolo beneath his clothes and in the dark. Holding his hips, his waist, he flashed back to Ikolo grinding on top of him, his hands wrapped around Ikolo’s hips in an entirely different way.
Ikolo leaned into his chest, briefly, but enough to catch his heart on fire before they sped away.
They made good time, Ikolo weaving between the mud ruts and craters. The water crossings were few, and Elliot kept track of the time.
Ikolo slowed a half hour before the four hour mark, drawing to a stop at the side of the track. “I can smell the smoke,” he said. “We’re close.”
“I’m going ahead on foot. I can move through the brush and find a position to recon the situation.” Elliot had repacked his bags and moved his weapons to the top. He still had the old Kalashnikov he’d taken the day before and his silenced pistol. He’d kept a few grenades too, flashbangs just in case.
Ikolo propped the motorbike on its stand and stood in front of him. He’d wrapped his Kalashnikov around his neck and under his arm while they rode, but now he gripped it in a ready position, finger off the trigger and on the guard, the muzzle aiming down.
No civilian held a rifle that way.
“You know how to use that.” It wasn’t a question.
Ikolo didn’t have to answer. Instead, he said, “I’m coming with you. I said I would stay with you through the journey and I meant every part of it.”
Waste time fighting, or accept Ikolo’s help? Ikolo knew what he was doing, there was no doubt about that. “We’ll hide the bike in the brush and move forward on foot.”
They wrestled the bike into the forest and hid it, packing their bags around the tires before covering everything with branches and elephant fronds. Ikolo led the way as they picked through the forest, wrestling over the sprawling gnarled roots of the iroko and agba trees and between the hanging rattan vines. They had to edge under an impenetrably tangled strophanthus thicket and weave through a bamboo thicket, the trunks so close together they sounded like windchimes when they moved. They stayed close, only feet apart, but when an elephant frond closed behind Ikolo, he disappeared from sight until Elliot caught up.
The stench of smoke, burned huts, and charred flesh guided them until it choked their throats.
Ikolo dropped to his belly and combat crawled to the base of a sjambok tree and knelt in the dewy moss and decaying foliage. Elliot followed, mirroring Ikolo’s movements.
Ikolo pointed over sjambok’s thick buttressed roots and held up five fingers.
Elliot peered over, enough to survey the location.
Five rebels stood in the burned village, smoking cigarettes and laughing. They wore mismatched uniforms, bloodied and faded army fatigues with a different country’s flag on each of their shoulders. Elliot spotted a flag from Malawi, one from Tanzania, and another from Guatemala. One rebel wore a blue UN beret on his head, but he definitely wasn’t part of the UN.
Bodies still smoldered inside one of the collapsed huts. Ash and the remnants of a burned thatch roof covered their faces, but four charred black arms reached from beneath the scorched palms as if trying to crawl free.
“Who are they?” he whispered, ducking down. “Mai-Mai?”
“No. Mai-Mai carry bows and arrows and wear totems and amulets. And body parts from those they’ve killed. There are not Mai-Mai. I think these are LRA.”
“LRA?” Elliot’s eyes went wide. “The last intel we heard on the LRA was they were farther north. That they only came into the Congo to poach game and sell ivory on the black market.”
Ikolo side-eyed him with a long stare. “Americans,” he muttered. “Always so sure of your intel.”
“Why areyousure they’re LRA?”
“Because LRA fighters steal uniforms from the soldiers they murder. That’s how they join the army. Each of those uniforms is from a UN peacekeeper who was murdered. I remember when the Guatemalan force was attacked. A joint Malawian and Tanzanian UN patrol was ambushed and killed in Ituri Province six months ago. Did you know that?”
Elliot said nothing.
